Kit vs MailerLite
Kit's Free Plan Goes to 10,000 Subscribers. What's the Catch?
MailerLite vs Mailchimp Free: Same 250 Subscribers, Five Times the Sends
The short answer
- Entry price
- Kit starts at $33/month; MailerLite starts at $12/month. MailerLite is $21 a month cheaper to start, and Kit is 2.8× the entry price. Entry price is not total cost — check the limit that binds first on each.
- Our rating
- 4.3/5 against 4.4/5. That gap is inside our own margin, so treat these as rated level and decide on the specifics below rather than on the score.
- Against the rest of the category
- Of the 7 email marketing tools we have reviewed that publish a starting price, Kit is the 7th cheapest to start and MailerLite the 2nd.
Kit
from $33/monthTen thousand subscribers free with unlimited broadcasts is the most generous free tier in email marketing by a wide margin. The catch is real but narrow: the free plan sends broadcasts, not sequences, so you are buying automation when you upgrade — not capacity.
What works
- ✓ Free to 10,000 subscribers — 40× Mailchimp's free contact limit
- ✓ Unlimited email broadcasts on the free plan, not a monthly send cap
- ✓ Built for writers and creators; the editor gets out of the way
- ✓ You can grow a real audience before paying anything
What does not
- ✗ Creator starts at $33/month for 1,000 subscribers — the paid entry is high
- ✗ Automation is the upgrade trigger, and most people need it sooner than 10,000 subscribers
- ✗ Formerly ConvertKit; older articles and integrations still use the old name
- ✗ Design flexibility is deliberately limited — plain text by philosophy, not by accident
MailerLite
from $12/monthBoth free plans cap at 250 subscribers. MailerLite lets you send 2,500 emails a month against Mailchimp's 500, and its paid entry is $12 against $13. On the specific comparison most people are actually making, it wins on the numbers.
What works
- ✓ Free plan sends 2,500 emails a month — five times Mailchimp's free allowance
- ✓ Comfort starts at $12/month, and Power at $25 removes send limits entirely
- ✓ Free plan includes a website builder and a landing page, not just email
- ✓ The editor is clean and fast; less clutter than the older incumbents
What does not
- ✗ 250 free subscribers is the same tight ceiling as Mailchimp — this is not a generous free tier
- ✗ Free plan allows only 3 active forms and 2 user seats
- ✗ Smaller integration ecosystem than Mailchimp — check your stack first
- ✗ Comfort's send limit is 10× your subscriber tier, so heavy senders climb tiers faster than list growth suggests
Who should pick which
Pick Kit if this is the thing that matters most to you:
Free to 10,000 subscribers — 40× Mailchimp's free contact limit.
What most often rules it out: Creator starts at $33/month for 1,000 subscribers — the paid entry is high.
Pick MailerLite if this is the thing that matters most to you:
Free plan sends 2,500 emails a month — five times Mailchimp's free allowance.
What most often rules it out: 250 free subscribers is the same tight ceiling as Mailchimp — this is not a generous free tier.
Figures come from our review of each product, checked against the vendor's own pricing page. We do not convert currencies or rank prices quoted on different billing periods — where that applies it is said above, not quietly resolved.
A third option, and what it is not
Bonfire Terminal is an AI agent that runs as a desktop app on your own machine — no cloud, nothing you type leaves your computer. It does not do what Kit or MailerLite do, and we will not pretend it does. If either is doing its job for you, keep it.
What the $27 actually gets you→The way in is the AI Marketers Club — $27 one-time, including 21 days of access. Keeping it after that is a separate purchase; the vendor's FAQ states Bonfire Terminal starts at $5,000. We earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which is why both tools' drawbacks are printed in full above and the $5,000 is here rather than left for you to find later.